Research capacity and cooperation in the world’s least-developed countries: Senegal, Haiti, Nepal, Cambodia — where 2D materials are for storage devices and renewable energy

The most vulnerable and impoverished populations live in 46 nations designated by the United Nations (UN) as the world’s least-developed countries (LDCs). They are more vulnerable to economic and environmental catastrophes because of their lack of food security, drinking water and electricity. Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected economic growth in these countries.

Nature Index spoke to researchers based in four LDCs — Senegal, Haiti, Nepal and Cambodia — about what works and what doesn’t when global-north countries attempt to collaborate and bolster research capacity in their nations.

Researchers in the poorest nations are therefore often dependent on foreign investors for access to scientific equipment, advanced-degree opportunities and training.

There were PhD students in my laboratory who were training in the material sciences. I have graduated from 7 PhDs and am studying for 11 more. There is a way to study up to a PhD level in Senegalese, but it is not always possible due to the lack of state-of-the-art equipment.

We often depend on science diplomacy to bring about our own lab-based science. To get access to equipment and training, I designed a concept to create a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between our university and those abroad. For example, in data science, I have a MOU with the National Institute of Scientific Research in Montreal, Canada, to access facilities such as high-resolution electron-microscopy equipment and X-ray diffraction technology. Our joint proposal received funding from Canada’s International Development Research Centre. Students are asked to go there for three to six months to use their equipment. So far, four of my students have gone to Montreal; the first graduated in November. It is difficult to set up MOUs between schools if one is English and the other is French. Two MOU documents are drawn up in each language.

Another strategy is to help the student secure funding, as well as a place in a collaborator’s lab. In this situation, the student is fully funded but there is no Memorandum of Understanding. When I was working with a researcher at a Pennsylvania university, I decided to create a project that involves 2D materials for storage devices or renewable energy, and then selected students in Senegal for the Faculty for the Future fellowship from the Schlumberger Foundation. I’ve had one postdoc and a PhD student get these fellowships to do the work at Drexel. These collaborative training strategies are not common practices in Senegal and it’s not really a strategy that researchers can use unless they have already built an international network.

International funders are the largest source of grants. The Climate and Development Knowledge Network based in Cape Town, South Africa has received grants from a number of organizations. Currently, we have programme funding worth 20.5 million Nepalese rupees (US$154,000). Although many international organizations are active as development partners, the number of research partners is quite limited by comparison.

I have a PhD in water quality from 2020 and I wanted to focus on the most productive lake in southeast Asia. Many food production areas, including Thailand and Vietnam, are very important to Cambodia because of the Tonlé sap. My research suggests that fish may be declining owing to decreased water quality — notably low oxygen — around the lake, which is linked to the increased use of chemical fertilizers for rice production in the area. When the lake of water is drained, the oxygen levels are ruined and fish are harmed.

I’ve also applied for funding from NexGen Mekong Scientists, a programme supported by the US Department of State, to bring together early-career scientists in the four countries — Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos — that depend on the Mekong River. The funding paid for my travel to Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, to learn more about the work of other scientists on these same issues. I learned how to adapt different designs to fit my study area through new field techniques there.

Our government needs better results. Other countries are free to do what they want with the Mekong River because we don’t have evidence of the downstream impacts. For example, dams built farther upstream, very far away from Cambodia, reduce the amount of water that the lake receives. The Mekong contributes 50% to the Tonlé Sap Lake’s inputs.

I would like to gain insight into how to sustain research projects over the long term thanks to theNexGen programme. Often, we get funding for equipment, but then there are so few people who are trained to use the equipment that it can sit idle after people graduate or the project ends. We need funding to maintain a flow of students, and their knowledge of equipment and laboratory techniques, to sustain research efforts. The best part of NexGen is that they are supporting researchers in all four countries along the Mekong, which helps us to create collaborations on cross-border projects to improve environmental conditions for everyone.

I work at the South Asia Institute of Advanced Studies, which provides research-based policy recommendations on social environmental issues to local, provincial and federal governments, notably natural-resource and disaster-risk-management agencies, in Nepal. We only have around 20 staff; it’s not a big organization. We also have part-time colleagues who are faculty members at universities abroad, in locations such as Sweden, Australia and the United States.

In Nepal, it can be tough to collaborate with international partners, given how strict our government is about sending money out of the country. Even if we lead a project, and the grant funding comes to our account, it can be difficult to transfer it to fund collaborators abroad. There is very little funding from the government for research. As a result, there are very limited opportunities — particularly for students and researchers who are trying to do social science. Without international scholarships, PhD training would not be possible for many of us.

A consistent challenge we face is that grant calls are driven by a global agenda, which does not always match local contexts in the developing world. For example, forest conservation is essential, but there are real-life challenges connected with increasing forest coverage, such as human–wildlife conflicts and food–water insecurity. These needs can be deemed ‘too local’ or of limited scope to funders or northern colleagues. Across the global south, language limitations are a problem. Sometimes the researcher from the north will finish the final writing of proposals and editing of publications. The northern partner may have different priorities, such as pushing new analytical frameworks and decision-making tools, if we emphasize the empirical findings. We have also experienced cases in which contributions of the global south are considered secondary compared with the theoretical arguments led by the northern partners.

A big challenge for clinical researchers in Haiti is the lack of quality medical data. We also have only one national journal where scientists can publish. There is not enough expertise among the professors to train students, especially in medical specialities. We do not have any cardiac surgeons. One of the biggest challenges is that most of the funding that comes to Haiti for medical research is for infections such as cholera and HIV. Diabetes and hypertension are two problematic conditions that need to be addressed. I want my global-north colleagues to know that Haiti has more than just a couple of infectious diseases. In neuroscience we need medical training. We only have eight computerized tomography scanners for the whole country, and it costs US$200–300 for a patient to get a scan.

My family helped me with my own trip to the United States to get experience in neurology. I reached out to a colleague at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, who helped me to connect with faculty members working on stroke research. I traveled to Kentucky to volunteer at the University of Louisville’s neurology department after I received my US medical licence in August and after I passed the first of three exams to do so. I will be going to Miami to get more experience in another hospital to strengthen my applications for residency at a top hospital in the United States once I finish the exams. After I finish a residency, in about five years, I want to take my expertise back to Haiti.

The global north-south divide is still far from parity: In the field of South Africa, Latin America, and the World Bank

Data from 82 natural-science journals tracked by Nature Index suggest that in this selective set of publications, global north–south research parity is still a distant goal. There were 13,580 articles in the index over the course of two years, but only 2,800 of them involved at least one author from the global north and the south. The global north was heavily weighted in the ratio of north–south authorship. India dominates among the global-south countries that are represented. There are separate data on south–south partnerships. Only 24 articles in the index since 2015 involve only global-south countries. The figure for the north–North collaborations was over 200,000.

There are a number of things that are not true. The World Bank used income groups to split countries because of the lack of definitive boundaries for the north and south. This inevitably leads to some arguable categorizations: South Africa is an upper middle-income country, for instance, and a global north country in the data. For most of Latin America, the same is true. Data from health-sciences journals was not available for analysis when the Nature index was added.